Femtocell is an emerging technology targeted for 3G/4G technologies such as a Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (UMTS), Code Division Multiplex Access (CDMA) systems, WiMax™ systems and Long Term Evolution (LTE) systems. Femtocells access points (AP) are radio access point devices that serve as mini cell tower devices to improve coverage of service to wireless user devices and offload mobile infrastructure of the mobile service provider by utilizing a subscriber's backhaul wide area network connection.
A wireless user device, also called User Equipment (UE), such as a cell phone or Smartphone, connects via the radio access point device to the wireless service provider's network. In a standard 3G system, the UE obtains its timezone information from the mobile switch center (MSC) in the wireless service provider's network. For macro cell towers, the location area code (LAC) included in the over-the-air (OTA) transmission from a macro cell tower can be used to differentiate the timezones and provide the appropriate timezone indicator to the UE. Radio access point devices, however, can be located in different time zones yet connect to the same gateway equipment, which in turn can connect to the same MSC. Consequently, the MSC needs to respond with a different timezone indicator to UE location requests sent via radio access point devices in different timezones.
Enterprise Femtos may be geographically distributed, which makes it difficult and sometimes undesirable to select a single unique LAC for all Femtos. For example, if Femtos are serviced by different regional gateways or are located in different time zones, a different LAC may be desired in order to optimize paging and in order to provide the correct time zone to a user terminal (UE). LAC assignment policies used for residential Femtos are not suitable for enterprise Femto developments because sometimes it is desirable for some enterprise Femtos to share the same LAC to minimize location updates for a roaming UE.